Mao as manager...

Well, I'm finally catching up on my reading of The Economist, which I like to get to every week, but which slipped out of my reach during the holidays.

I picked up December 22nd edition with some amusement, given that Chairman Mao was pictured on the cover wearing a Santa Claus cap (with a shiny red star on it). Ah, Photoshop!

The article "Mao and the art of management" matches the cover picture in spirit and wit, positioning Mao as a role model for bad managers, the ones that

...do not delight their customer, crush competitors, and create vast wealth. They struggle. They stumble....Where is the role model for the manager who really needs a role model most - the one who by any objective measure of performance cannot, and should not, manage at all?

Let's put aside that Mao was a strong man brute, responsible for the deaths of many, and the oppression of most, Chinese citizens, and let The Economist give him his due as manager. Here's why they think he's an exemplar of "four key ingredients which all bad managers could profitably employ."

For starters, there was Mao's "powerful, mendacious slogan", Serve the People, a slogan the Chairman used to rationalize whatever cold-blooded, calculated act he was up to and, of course, to bludgeon his people. The Economist likes this one not just because Mao so clearly didn't live by it, but because it "expressed precisely and succinctly what he should have been doing."

I've never experienced dishonest sloganeering on quite this grand scale in my business career, but I sure have known plenty of disingenuous executives and managers who spent an awful lot of time telling us underlings just how and why the organization placed such a high value on its people, when in truth the only time they really focused on "the people" was when they had to reduce expenses. Decreasing headcount by lopping off heads! It may not work, but it's fun! It's easy! Beware of any company whose credo is "human capital is our most important asset."

The Economist gives Mao props for his "ruthless media manipulation," through which he built his personal "brand value." Think Little Red Book. Think Mao jackets and caps. Think Mao swimming in the Yangtze River to "prove" he was in good health. (Or think of what cut and paste photo manipulation looks like without Photoshop. It does kind of look like he's standing up in water wearing a Mao jacket, doesn't it?)

For The Economist:

The brand-building lesson is that a clear, utopian message, hammered home relentlessly, can obscure inconvenient facts. Great salesmen are born knowing this. Executives whose strategies are not delivering need to learn it.

Obviously, there's only so far that a business exec can go - nowhere near as far as Old Mao could have gotten. But we've all seen puff pieces and brilliantly spun articles on The Great Leader - some CEO or another - that bear no relationship whatsoever to what, as it turns out, is actually going on in the company. (I'll have to go back and search for flattering articles on those fin-serv execs who got bounced after losing ka-billions in the mortgage meltdown. Bet they were geniuses during the go-go years.)

Then there's Mao's willing "sacrifice of friends and colleagues."

Who among us hasn't witnessed this time and again. And I'm not talking about at the highest levels of power, either. How often have we seen the big guy start tossing people into the fire the minute the flames get anywhere near their butts.

Actually, an unfortunate aspect of this practice is that is is not always - or usually - peers (not to mention superiors) who get treated in this way: it tends to be underlings. (They were expendable....)

And, of course, we've all seen people in senior positions take out someone under them who poses a threat - perceived or actual - to their position. (As if getting rid of someone competent makes you more competent...)

The final Mao attribute is my favorite: "activity substituting for achievement. "

Policies [under Mao] were poor, execution dreadful and leadership misdirected, but each initiative seemed to create a centripetal force, as everyone looked toward Beijing to see how to march forward...The business equivalent of this is restructuring, the broader the better. Perhaps for the struggling executive, this is the single most important lesson: if you can't do anything right, do a lot. The more you have going on the longer it will take for the disastrous consequences to become clear.

Hmmmm. This seems to be a problem not just at the top of an organization, but throughout it. Just think of all those whirling dervishes you've worked with who seemingly make themselves indispensable by doing a lot of "stuff", by their perpetual willingness to take on even more "stuff", to be always around - always available. (Gulp, I believe I've even been one myself.)

In any case, a funny riff on Mao that I have not doubt done an injustice to.

I've written on managerial role models (and anti-role models) before. Some I've worked with and for, some - like Bruce Springsteen and the Red Sox' Terry Francona - I obviously haven't. But the presence of Mao-ist management in so many organizations is reason enough not to want to go back into the corporate world full bore any time soon.